After the Piggie Awards, we’ve seen a lot of comment on the top bloggers who won awards. A fair number of people are saying they’re impressed, they want to write like them – and some people have said that they find top bloggers like Gazimoff, Rades, Apple Cider or Melmoth intimidating, or feel that they can’t live up to them.
Well, the winner of this year’s Most Memorable Blog Post, Cynwise, has written a fantastic article in response to those concerns, talking about blogging, his own start in blogging and how he looked up to the great bloggers himself, and how he very nearly didn’t post his winning piece at all
“Let me tell you a little bit about the post that won, On The Forsaken. I wrote it in a frenzy, over two nights after thinking about it for a week. I wrote it only after thinking about those quests and staring up at that statue in Brill for like 15 minutes. Seriously. Clink, clink, clink, things falling into place, I must write now.
It was also the first post on CFN that I looked at and said, I cannot publish this.
It is too much. It is too controversial.”
I heartily recommend this post to anyone who is blogging, about WoW or otherwise – or anyone working in another creative medium, for that matter. Everything from Cynwise’s tales of attempting to emulate the greats to the story of how On The Forsaken eventually was published is great, important stuff.
I must admit, this post struck some personal chords for me. I still feel that I’m looking up to the greats in my chosen profession. For those who don’t know, when I’m not running the Pot, I’m a professional filmmaker. And whilst I’ve had some success, that’s an intimidating field to work in. I look at the work of people like Brad Bird, Aaron Sorkin, Joss Whedon, Peter Jackson, and so on, and sometimes I wonder what the hell I’m doing.
And then, in the words of Cynwise, I say
“Fuck it.
/publish.”
How do you get over being intimidated by your heroes?
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“How do you get over being intimidated by your heroes?”
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In the words of the Tough Alliance via Redskins (two bands, for those who might be wondering), “take no heroes, only inspiration.”
That’s my approach and advice. I think that looking at successful people in any field as icons is unproductive. I think what’s productive is drawing ideas and inspiration from whatever work you think is great or special. It’s human to look at and admire the artists themselves, but I think the most personally productive attitude is to ignore the people themselves, who can be intimidating by their stature in whatever community they’re relevant to, and appropriate what you can (whether process, stylistic ideas, related inspiration, etc) to assist you in creating your own work.
Nothing works better than a strong dose of delusions of grandeur and talent. I’ve gotten by for years just by being absolutely certain that I was doing the world a favor by writing down my words for all to read rather than just screaming them from the corner like I used to.
If it makes me laugh I hit publish. No regrets. I’ve been criticized for my spelling mistakes to my choices in dishware and you know what….don’t care. I have fun, the silly photos and the twitter jokes make me laugh. If you become your own voice people will listen. The “greatest bloggers” out there are great because they are themselves.
Or in my case, because I’m…wait, no, I’m not — erm, never mind.
Yup. I’m myself.
I just got linked on MMO melting pot for the first time (I’m still not sure how you found my little backwater blog at all, on a private domain with little traffic – not that I’m complaining!), but I found the “I cannot publish this / fuck it” line very true. The post that was linked here was thrown together in a hurry; I basically needed something to schedule in advance while I was on a work trip. I wanted to have a steady flow of posts, I liked the topic, I just didn’t have much time to polish it. I probably spent less than 15 minutes on the “floating names” post. Had I known it would be linked, I would have invested more time. Then again, who knows, maybe if I had done so, it wouldn’t have been linked.
I’m still working on that elusive thing of “finding my voice”. I’ll just go trial & error and see what that leads to. If you listen to others, that’s actually a good idea, so I’ll keep at it.
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